Iowa family of 6 and 2 others killed in their sleep
Not many people locked their doors in the tiny town of Villisca, Iowa in 1912. There were just more than 2000 residents, and they all knew each other. Life changed for every one of them after Josiah and Sarah Moore, their four children and two friends sleeping over at the Moore home were found dead in their beds, mutilated. The visiting friends, sisters ages 12 and 8, had planned to spend that night at their grandmother’s house but the Moores’ 10-year-old daughter had invited them to stay with her after that evening’s church event.
Sometime after midnight, the assailant carried Joe Moore’s ax into the darkness of the house. On the first floor, the visiting Stillinger sisters slept together in a bedroom and are believed to have been killed last. The six members of the Moore family were asleep in bedrooms on the second floor. Investigators believed the parents were attacked first, then the killer methodically worked his way through all the children, going downstairs for the final two deaths. The killer used the blunt edge of the ax blade to deliver the fatal blows, a fact later used to theorize the Villisca victims were killed by a man suspected of two other ax murders. After killing all in the Moore home, the assailant went back to each body, bashed their heads then covered their faces – now unrecognizable – with clothing or bed clothes. The killer then put cloths over every window and mirror in the house. A kerosene lamp with its chimney removed had been placed at the foot of at least two of the beds.
The12-year-old friend, Lena Stillinger, is the only one of the eight victims believed to have awakened during the attacks. The presence of a defensive wound on her arm indicated she tried to fight off her assailant.
In the morning, a neighbor became concerned because no one from the Moore home had come outside to tend to the animals, and she alerted Moore’s brother responded and discovered the bodies. The doors to the home had been locked.
The death scene was so gruesome the residents of Villisca feared for their lives. They secured their doors and windows, slept in groups and stood vigil against a crazed ax murderer on the loose.
A prime suspect in the case was Frank Jones, a State Senator who owned a farm implement store in town. He was known to have a substantial grudge against his former employee, Moore, who left Jones’s employ to open his own implement store. He took the John Deere account with him, and Jones never forgot the slight.
Even those who believed Jones was involved did not believe he himself wielded the ax. An investigator tied another man, William Mansfield, to the Moore deaths, pointing to two other ax killings, one four days before the Villisca deaths and one two years later when Mansfield’s wife, infant child and two other relatives died of ax blows. Evidence showed all three ax sprees had enough similarities that the same person could be responsible. Mansfield, however, was never charged due to an alibi: He was working in Illinois when the Moore family was killed.
Rev. George Kelly, a traveling preacher and peeping Tom, drew suspicion because he had been at the church event attended by the Moore family, then left town early the next morning. He “confessed” to the murders but then said that confession had been forced. His first trial ended in a hung jury, and he was acquitted in the second.
In 2017, writers Bill James and his daughter Rachel McCarthy James published “The Man From The Train,” an investigation of a series of ax murders across the country between 1897 and 1912, and they believe the Villisca killings were committed by this serial killer. (See below or more on this series of deaths.)
No one was ever convicted of killing the Moores, their children Herman, Katherine, Boyd and Paul and the Stillinger girls, Lena and Ina. As with the Lizzie Borden house, the Moore homestead in Villisca, in southwestern Iowa, is open to visitors as well as overnight guests. The house is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
